Bryk, Ivan

Bryk, Ivan [Брик, Іван], b 8 July 1879 in Ustryky Dolishni, Lisko county, Galicia, d 17 September 1947 in Landeck, Austria. Literary scholar, teacher, and civic leader; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1919. Bryk received his PhD from Vienna University in 1903. A gymnasium teacher and researcher from 1904, he taught at the Academic Gymnasium of Lviv and the Lviv (Underground) Ukrainian University, wrote for Galician newspapers, and contributed articles on Ukrainian-Czech relations, the Galician press, the Galician revival (Markiian Shashkevych), and Taras Shevchenko to Galician and Czech scholarly journals. In 1902 Bryk founded and headed the Ukrainian Hromada in Prague. He is best known for his activity in the central office of the Prosvita societies in Lviv, where he served as secretary, office director (1906–10), acting head (1919–23), deputy head (1923–31), and head (1932–9). Bryk organized the First Ukrainian Educational and Economic Congress in Lviv in 1909 and the Second All-Ukrainian Educational Congress in 1929. In 1915–18 he was a prisoner of war in Turkestan. In 1931–3 he edited the illustrated educational monthly Zhyttia i znannia. Bryk is the author of a monograph on the Slavic Congress in Prague, 1848: Slav’ians'kyi z’ïzd u Prazi 1848 r. i ukraïns'ka sprava (The Slavic Congress in Prague in 1848 and the Ukrainian Question, 1920) and Materiialy do istoriï ukraïns'ko-ches'kykh vzaiemyn v pershii polovyni XIX st. (Materials on the History of Ukrainian-Czech Relations in the First Half of the 19th Century), vol 15 of Ukraïns’ko-rus’kyi arkhiv (1920).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]